


Sanctity : Contrite Spirits

by kattahj



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Churches & Cathedrals, Drama, Gen, Remix
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-01-01
Updated: 2005-01-01
Packaged: 2017-11-08 15:08:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,318
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/444512
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kattahj/pseuds/kattahj
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Faith finds herself in a Canadian church and starts thinking about the effects religion has had on her own life.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sanctity : Contrite Spirits

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Contrite Spirits](https://archiveofourown.org/external_works/9489) by Lizbeth Marcs. 



Since Willow’s spell, I’ve seen a lot of weird-ass girls turn Slayer. Even the teeny weeny ones that totally shouldn’t have anything to worry about but teething. Makes me think there should’ve been an age limit on the damn thing – what mom wants a baby that tries to stake her teddy bear?

Weird doesn’t even begin to cover how I feel when I find out next chick on the list is a *nun*. As in churches. Prayers. Fucking celibacy. And we gotta pick her up in a French Canadian church that has a miracle statue that heals folk. Nun Slayer *and* miracle statue is a bit much for a week day, you know?

But it’s funny how you can do something for the first time in ten years and it feels like you never stopped. I dip my fingers in holy water and cross myself going into the church, and hell, I even curtsy. Me. I half expect Xander Harris to give me some snide comment, but when I turn to tell him to shut up, he’s standing around like a big lug, gawping at the church shit like he’s a three-year-old at the zoo. Why did I ever screw this guy? He’s sticking out like a sore thumb in this place, and for some reason it bothers me. Feels like blasphemy – and ain’t that a joke, after all that I’ve done. I poke him with my elbow, and that gets him to snap out of it. He closes his mouth and gains about ten years in mental age.

“Do what I just did,” I whisper, trying to keep my voice down. 

“Hunh?” Xander doesn’t seem to mind that his voice echoes down the isle. 

“You wanna look outta place or what? Just do it.” 

He does, but I can tell he thinks I’m on crack. I don’t know what his problem is. The way I see it, crossing yourself with holy water is killing two birds with one stone.

Rationalization, Giles would call that. I don’t do this stuff ’cause I’m a slayer and know it helps. That’s just an excuse not to stop myself.

”Guess you can’t take the Catholic out of the girl, right?” I quip. 

He looks at me like he expects me to start singing Hallelujahs. ”You’re Catholic?”

Part of me wants to snap at him for sounding like being Catholic is such a great achievement that I couldn’t possibly live up to. At least I’m not a kiddyfucker like those priests on the news. But I know it’s not Faith plus Catholicism that’s freaking him out, it’s Faith plus *having* faith. Any faith.

And that, I totally understand. Freaks me out too. I’m a big girl now, a Slayer veteran out to look for fledgling Slayers, I’ve been bad and been good and I’ve paid my debt to society – well, okay, so I only paid a little bit of my debt to society, but stopping Angelus has to count for something too.

I’m not the kind of girl who worships anything. Least of all the old jerk who lives in churches.

”Sorta,” I say, making a see-saw motion with my hand. ”Haven’t been in a church for so long I’m pretty sure that the statues will melt.” That’s a comforting thought – all those glaring eyes melted into a puddle of goo from my shocking appearance. That’ll teach them.

”Even our miracle statue?” 

That gets to me. ”Don’t joke about sh- I mean, stuff like that.” 

Maybe if the miracle statue was of another saint, like Saint Bernhard, or Saint Bridget, or Saint motherfucking Paul, I would have gone along with the joke. But Saint Anne – she’s a grandmother. That’s what she’s *known* for. You don’t melt someone’s little old grandmother, and you don’t curse in front of her, either.

Especially not if she can perform miracles and you want to stay in one piece. 

I don’t really think the statue is gonna hurt me – screw her in that case, I’ve fought bigger bads on a lunch break. But I find I’m still a bit quiet. So’s Xander, though I can’t tell if it’s because he’s caught up in the church thing like I am, or if he just doesn’t want to piss me off. I don’t care. Leaves me a bit of space to get used to being here.

I’ve never been to Canada before, and definitely never been *here*, but when I walk through the church, it’s like, yeah, I *have* been here before. I recognize everything I see: the little red light, the globe full of candles, the creepy triangle eye up in the roof.

I suddenly remember those crosses on the floor where everyone can hear what you’re saying. So the priest wouldn’t shout his lungs out, of course, but it was fun to play with, too. That bitch who taught us in CCD pulled my hair, because all I ever said was nasty things, but the boys paid me candy to say the worst words I could think of, so in my mind, it was all right. Took a couple of spots like that before she wouldn’t let me use them anymore. Those pretty crosses on the floor were for priests and nuns and sweet little angel children. I guess my potty mouth ruined it all for her.

And I’ll be damned if this church doesn’t have the same marked spots. It’s so predictable I can’t help grinning. It’s like coming home. Home where a bunch of tight-asses told me God hated me, but hey.

”It’s such a load of crap,” Sally whatsherface told me once when we left CCD to go see what we could steal from the mall. ”Why would God *hate* us? He *made* us, didn’t he?”

Considering who else had made me I didn’t think that was a very good argument, but I never got anything back home, so I needed that stuff from the mall. If God wanted to hate me, fine. He could get in fucking line.

Now I’m starting to wonder if maybe she had a point. This place feels *good*. I can tell when I’m not wanted – years of practice. I don’t feel it here. I don’t think Xander feels it either, even if he’s being all jumpy.

’Sides, it’s kind of pretty. I like candles, especially when the draft makes them all dribbly like it does in here.

I wonder if Sister Slayer’s going to feel as horny as I do after a fight. Could be a bit of trouble for her.

Maybe she’ll be like Buffy and deny it all. But I kind of hope she’ll feel it – she’s probably not gotten a good turn-on in years.

At least she’ll have one thing going for her. This place is like a Slayer’s dream come true. Weapons everywhere, disguised as religious stuff.

 

\--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I wonder how much holy water you can bless and still have it be holy... 

It’d be fun to try and bless a lake at some point – do vampires go swimming? – but we can’t really bring a lake with us, so I choose some giant jugs when we go to the gift-shop. The clerk looks at me like I’ve grown an extra head and even Xander seems a bit doubtful, but hey, I’m willing to bet these babies will get the job done. Plus, once they’re empty they’ll look really cool on my wall of stuff.

I’m hardly ever home these days, but it’s good to have something to come back to, even if it’s just a collection of hokey tourist shit I pick up as I go around. Well, last time I came home to find a naked black ass staring me in the face. ”To surprise me,” he said. Do it again and I’ll kick his ass.

He won’t, though. Not now that I’m expecting it. 

Damn him. 

After the priest has blesses the jugs of water we sit down by the bubbler and Xander tells me this really funny story about two local gods turning him into a vampire just to mess with him. Xander’s been great on this trip. Who would’ve thought?

“So while I’m yelling and hollering, there’s Legba and Eshu going, ‘Harri-man is so handsome now! Harri-man will get all the girls now! Isn’t he a pretty Harri-man?’”

I can’t help it, I’m laughing already, and the longer the story goes on, the more I enjoy it. Can’t have been as fun to live through it as it is to hear, but Xander as a vampire must have been a sight. And hey, it has a happy ending. Xander gets his face back, kills the vamps, and finds a new Slayer. I love stories with a happy ending.

Makes me wonder if those gods had it planned that way from the start. Funny *and* the good guys? Sounds like a pair of keepers, if you ask me.

“No, no,” he protests when I suggest it to him. ”They were pretty clear the whole exploding vampire schtick was just for fun. Had nothing to do with anything.”

We argue some more about it, but I can tell he doesn’t want a pair of practical jokers to be the good guys. I do, though. Chip and Dale as my patron saints would make life a bit easier to take.

It’s not until we’re back in the church that I remember. Patron saint. Holy *shit*.

Sally whatsherface was wrong. God didn’t make me. Well, I guess the old guy had his hand in it like he does in everything, but the final touch? Added by a sad and pathetic drunk in a lowly apartment and a chatty chick who just happened to be a saint.

I can still hear mom’s slurred voice telling me about it: ”I wanted that son of a bitch to get what was coming to him, you know? And you – you were going to be tougher and stronger than any fucking bastard of a guy. So they couldn’t ever screw you over and throw you out on your ass, because if they did, you’d rip their balls off. My superhero girl, better than the lot of them...”

Did mom have any idea what she was doing when she made that wish? One drunken rant and congratulations, Miss, your daughter is a Slayer. Not that she ever found out about that. The scum who fathered me was shived to death in jail, and that was enough for her.

I find a Saint Anyanka statue in the church, although she was desanctified a long time ago, and I even light a candle. I don’t know if it’s for my mom or for Anyanka, if it’s a thank you or I forgive you.

Do I want to be a Slayer? 

What the hell would I be if I wasn’t? It has sucked beyond belief sometimes, sure, but life does that. Better than being back in Boston and watching my mom slowly kill herself.

Xander’s made his mind up, though, because when I’m finished telling him the story, he says, ”I’m sorry.”

“You weren’t there,” I say, because I don’t see what the hell he has to be sorry about, “and you didn’t knock my mother up, you didn’t tell her pray to St. Anyanka, and you didn’t make St. Anyanka answer. It happened long before you ever came into the picture.”

I can hear his breath catching, and it strikes me: he thought I didn’t know. That I didn’t make the connection between his little airhead girlfriend and the saint who granted my mom’s wish.

And maybe I didn’t, until today. Hell, I don’t even know if it really happened. But of course I’ve *wondered* – been wondering for years, since the whole Slayer thing started. Connected a few dots. Now the picture’s nearly done, and it feels fitting, like it’s all coming together. Mom gets to be part of the Slayer thing too. It’s weird, but kind of a comfort, like there’s something of hers still around.

The second realization strikes harder than the first: he thought I’d *mind*. 

What are saints except people that ended up doing something kind of miraculous? Does he think the rest of them were any better? Forget the saints, even the Bible is full of it – good people doing bad shit, bad people doing good shit.

Mom may have fucked up, but it’s the one moment I know that she cared what happened to me, and I’ll always have that. Every time I dust a vamp, every time I get laid afterwards I’ll know that, and I don’t care if it was a demon that made it possible.

And even though I don’t tell anyone anymore, and sure as shit don’t tell Xander now, I don’t care that Wilkins was evil either. I get why they had to stop him, no hard feelings, but it doesn’t change what he was to me. ’Cause that was real. It’s got nothing to do with the rest of the shit he did.

And Xander... he loved Anya. He still loves her, as far as I can tell. How can he make that fit into this whole business with saints and demons, if he doesn’t believe that sometimes they’re both?

I can’t ask. Can’t tell him you need to look at what’s there, ’cause looking at what’s not makes you crazy.

She’s gone. She’ll always *be* gone, and none of that turn-lemons-to-lemonade schtick is gonna change that. Why the hell should I make him feel worse?

A whole bunch of nuns are coming in, and I know one of them is Sister Slayer, but I can’t deal with her right now. I hurry out of the church, away from her and Xander. I’ll talk to her eventually, share the glorious Slayer destiny and all that crap. But right now, I’ve got a thing or two to sort out with her boss.


End file.
